Minecraft First/Second Day and Night
The First Day and Night Now that you know the basics of creating a new world, it's time for you to try it out! Click "Create New World," and you will spawn in a world. Before you wander off into caves to explore for quick diamonds, you need to prepare for the first night. The first thing you should do is do the traditional thing that so many players do throughout the world - harvest wood. Wood is an essential material to everyday life, from the first fateful day, to the glorious time when you beat the game. Punch, or right-click, a nearby tree. It will take a while, which means you will need a set of wooden tools to make things faster. After you punch about 3 trees, go to your inventory, by pressing E, and drag your wood blocks into one of the four boxes in the crafting grid. This will output as wooden planks. Use the wooden planks to make a crafting table by placing one wooden plank in each four boxes. Drag the table into your hotbar and leave the inventory by pressing E again. Right-click the table anywhere on the ground and it should be placed on the ground. Right-click the crafting table once more and make some sticks. Then craft a wooden pickaxe and a wooden axe. It may seem like a lot to do due to the amount of text here, but once you play, you'll do fine. Trust me. Now you start building your first shelter! It doesn't matter what shelter you make, but it should protect you from monsters and be quick and easy to construct, because you don't have a lot of time right now. An artificial cave in a cliff will do for now and is recommended. While you cave in with your pickaxe (don't forget that stone will take almost forever to mine without a pickaxe!), you'll get cobblestone as well. Once you finish caving in, use 8 blocks to craft a furnace in your crafting table and place it in your base. You're probably stressed out already, probably because of the fact that not many players survive their very first night. But you can do this! It's right about sunset, so you'll need to work quickly. Use your spare wood blocks to make a few planks and use the planks to burn the rest of the wood in your furnace. You may think this is crazy, but this is what many players do when they don't have coal - make charcoal. Why do you need coal, you ask? Torches. Why do you need torches, you ask? Lighting. And I hope you know why you need light. To stop monsters from spawning! Also, you need light to see. Many players ask the same question over again and I'll just answer right away. 2 wood planks can smelt 3 items, a lump of coal or charcoal. can smelt 8 items, a blaze rod (more about that later) can smelt 12 items, and a lava bucket can smelt 100 items. Hopefully you get it because I'm moving on. After the wood blocks are smelted, the output slot of the furnace will give you charcoal for each wood block you burn. Charcoal, coal. Same thing. Combine a lump of charcoal with a stick and you'll get 4 torches. Great deal. Place torches around you're house and remember that the torches should be no farther than 7 blocks apart, meaning that the maximum number of blocks between the torches should be 5. Any torches left should be used to good use. Where? In your mineshaft. Dig a mineshaft to get underground resources like coal (yup), iron, and, if you're really, really lucky (and I mean it), you just might get a few ores of gold. Iron, gold, leather, and diamonds can be crafted into armor, while wood, stone, iron, gold, and diamonds can be crafted into tools (pickaxes, axes, shovels, swords, and hoes). I'll talk about redstone later. Make sure to light your mineshaft well and don't hope for diamonds yet, but you never know... Hunger and Resources Whew! Good job! Congratulations! You survived the first night! Pat yourself on the back and come out of your comfy shelter. This is one part I hate - when I get out of my house. This is because creepers lurk. As long as they're not in the shade of another object or in water, zombies and skeletons burn and die during the day, but they will seek those two if they can. Zombies are deal quite a lot of damage, but they are slow, making them easy to kill, even with a stone sword. Watch out for skeletons that hide in the shade of trees - they are deadly snipers and can cause annoyance. Approach them with caution. I recommend sliding right to left while running forward to kill them. Close range is effective when killing these bony undeads. Spiders are neutral when daylight comes, but if you attack them, they automatically become hostile. They are fast and jumpy, making them hard to hit, but they have less health than zombies. Always make sure to have the higher ground when facing them. Creepers are the ones you should worry most. These widely-hated green creatures hide behind tall grasses and blend into their background. When they get close to you, they start to hiss for one and a half second before they explode like TNT. Talk about kamikaze! Be mighty aware of them! To kill these guys, hit it with a sword and quickly run back to avoid it from exploding. Do this multiple times and you will be rewarded with gunpowder if you kill it without it exploding. Use this to make TNT and splash potions. After you secure the area for a few seconds, search for food. One option of obtaining food is farming. I usually make a farm on the third day, and on the second, I usually hunt. Don't kill a lot of animals. Two or three animals will be enough for a day. Besides, you'll need the rest to make a meat farm. After you kill a few for meat, the next priority will be finding sheep. Sheep are relatively easy to find - they spawn in every biome except mushroom islands, the Nether, the End, and oceans. Ever since the 1.8 update, sheep dropped mutton as well as wool. Kill three sheep and pick up the wool that they will drop. As long as there's a little more time left, you can collect more wood. Go back to your shelter when evening comes and make a bed. Place a bed somewhere in your shelter and sleep. Note that when you have a bed in you hand and you right-click the ground the place it, the selected ground will have the lower part of the bed. Right-click the bed and you will automatically sleep. You cannot sleep if it is day or if monsters are pursuing you. If it is day, a message that says "you can only sleep at night" will show up, and if monsters are pursuing you, a message that says "monsters are nearby" will show. Also, sleeping stops everything in your environment. This includes smelting items in your furnace and growing crops and trees.